Zelensky under pressure to fire chief of staff over ‘Golden toilet scandal’
Volodymyr Zelensky is under mounting pressure to fire Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, amid a corruption scandal centred around a golden toilet.
Around £76m has been skimmed from Ukraine’s energy sector by business leaders and officials, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (Nabu).
Mr Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s most-trusted advisor, has been accused of stifling anti-corruption investigations, though not of profiting from the scheme himself.
Unnamed officials told local media that Kyiv’s government could be brought down should Mr Zelensky fail to remove Mr Yermak, saying: “Our enemies smell blood.”
Accusations of corruption in the energy sector are particularly sensitive among Ukrainians, who face daily power cuts as a result of Russian attacks on the country’s infrastructure.
The scandal comes with Ukrainians facing daily power cuts during a biting winter and continued Russian attacks on energy sites and civilian homes - Andriy Bodak/Reuters
Last week, Nabu published the findings of a 15-month investigation into the attempted embezzlement by Energoatom, a state-run nuclear energy company, using secret recordings of conversations between high-profile individuals given mafia-style aliases.
Timur Mindich, a close personal associate and business partner of Mr Zelensky, is accused of being the mastermind behind the scheme. He fled the country hours before Nabu arrived at his home.
Detectives found a golden toilet bowl in Mr Mindich’s bathroom – an excruciating image of excess that has received significant backlash in war-torn Ukraine.
A golden toilet said to be from one of the bathrooms in the apartment of Timur Mindich, who has fled the country - Telegram
Mr Mindich is the co-owner of Kvartal 95, the media production company Mr Zelensky founded, and the pair have been friends since before Mr Zelensky entered politics.
Herman Halushchenko, the Ukrainian justice minister, and Svitlana Hrynchuk, their energy minister, resigned last week, despite denying any wrongdoing.
Some lawmakers have suggested Mr Yermak should be next after opponents claimed that he – or one of his lieutenants – is Ali Baba, an anonymous codename used for one of the individuals in the energy-case wiretaps.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos, told Politico that even MPs from Mr Zelensky’s own party – Servant of the People – suspected that Mr Yermak was linked to the corruption plot.
Semen Kryvonos, the head of Nabu, has refused to publicly confirm or deny whether Mr Yermak features in the wiretaps. Mr Yermak has denied any involvement.
Pressure on Mr Yermak has been mounting since the summer after he was accused of being at the heart of efforts to strip anti-corruption agencies of their power in Ukraine.
There are other incentives to unseat Mr Yermak: he has attracted criticism for what many believe to be sweeping efforts to centralise power during the war with Russia, as well as for his overbearing influence on the Ukrainian president.
The pair have become symbiotically close during the war, sleeping near each other in the bunker of the presidential compound and playing table tennis or watching classic films together in the evenings, according to the Financial Times.
Some see the scandal as an opportunity to oust the top aide amid concerns that his forceful approach has occasionally led the administration astray.
The scandal has come at a sensitive time for Mr Zelensky. Kyiv is facing a vast budget shortfall and is hoping to persuade its Western allies that they can be trusted with billions in funds despite their own domestic economic pressures.
The case against Mr Mindich rests on 1,000 hours of wiretaps revealing his significant influence over Herman Haluschenko, Ukraine’s energy minister from 2021 to 2025, until he was named justice minister in July. Mr Haluschenko resigned from this post after the investigation became public this week.
While rarely named as a direct beneficiary in official documents, investigators have cited wiretapping evidence that they allege shows Mr Mindich exerted control over a network of loyalists who pressured contractors for Energoatom. They allegedly demanded kickbacks of up to 15 per cent to bypass bureaucratic obstacles and to do business smoothly.
Investigators claimed the illicit funds were syphoned off, laundered through shell companies and funnelled into Mr Mindich’s pockets and those of his associates.
With Pokrovsk on the brink of collapse and much of Ukraine frequently deprived of power, news of high-profile public servants enriching themselves on state funds has spurred a wave of public outrage upon which opposition figures have capitalised.
Petro Poroshenko, the former president and Zelensky rival who was indicted on charges of treason and corruption in 2022, called for the entire cabinet to resign on Monday.
“To the smell of wartime smoke that has become all too familiar to Ukrainians over the years of the full-scale war, a heavy stench of rotting green mould has now been added,” Mr Poroshenko said.
Kira Rudik, the head of Holos, also called for a change of government on Monday, telling France 24: “We cannot afford to have these cases, because this will basically drag the country apart.”